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Fritzl's victims face life in care

Allan Hall, Berlin

SHOCKING details of the psychological and physical damage suffered by the Austrian incest family who grew up in a squalid dungeon emerged this week, suggesting they may need therapy for the rest of their lives.

It has been revealed that Kerstin Fritzl, 19, tore her hair out in clumps and ripped her dresses to shreds in the secret cellar she shared with her two brothers and mother Elisabeth.

In her frustration at spending all her life in a concrete basement of less than 60 square metres, she stuffed the dresses down the toilet, causing it to spill sewage into their living space.

Starved of vitamins, sunshine, fresh air, exercise and normal human stimulation, she plunged into a life-threatening illness in April that became her key to freedom.

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Her brother, Stefan, 18, still cannot walk properly. At 172.7 centimetres, he was forced to permanently stoop in the cellar, which was 167.6 centimetres in height.

His motor responses are awry, he feels giddy if he walks for any length of time, and doctors fear he may have prolonged spinal trouble.

Together with their brother, Felix, 6, and mother, Elisabeth, 42, they are being tended to by a team of specialists at a psychiatric clinic not far from the house in Amstetten where Elisabeth's father, Josef, 74, locked his daughter up 24 years ago and raped her repeatedly.

Altogether, he fathered seven children by her, three of whom he removed from the cellar to bring up with his wife, Rosemarie, in the house above. A seventh child died when he was three days old and was burned by Fritzl in the stove used to heat the house.

The three "upstairs" children are also at the clinic. Their psychiatric problems are mainly due to anger and resentment at their seemingly normal world being suddenly turned on its head.

Kerstin was finally taken to a local hospital in April. Her terrible condition so appalled doctors that they alerted police, and the macabre reign of Josef Fritzl ended. For weeks, Kerstin hovered close to death. She is out of danger, but suffering the kind of post-traumatic stress disorder that often afflicts soldiers.

Hospital sources revealed how the slightest everyday occurrence  "a door closing, a light going off, a room that she feels is too small"  plunges her into panic attacks.

She, like her brother and mother, daily takes a course of mood- and emotion-altering drugs to buoy her and blot out the terrible memories of her life spent underground, where she and Stefan had to listen to their father-grandfather rape their mother in the darkness.

"They are suffering far more than was previously thought," reported one German newspaper this week. Only Felix, it is hoped, may be capable of forgetting his past.

Their precarious mental state is one reason prosecutors do not think it a good idea for them to testify at Fritzl's trial, scheduled for December. They believe a taped deposition by Elisabeth in July will suffice. Prosecutors have not yet decided what charges to lay against Fritzl to ensure he never walks free.